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About Mach62

Thanks. Yes, it came all of a sudden with no warning and lasted until the plane crashed. I checked the connections and everything seemed okay. I will try going with a whip antennae instead of the patch and see if that helps.

I went out for an FPV flight today for the first time in 5 months with the same equip I have used before: A Range Video 500 mw tx/rx setup with a 14 DBI patch ant. Like before, I had my wife point the ant. at the plane but, unlike before, I started getting complete blackouts as soon as I came down to lower alt., under 100 feet or so. High altitude was no problem not even any interference at all. I trashed the plane as a result . . .
Any clues as to why it would be doing this when back in December it worked without a glitch?

It is my understanding that the Air Force has a secret squadron to patrol the skies for kites with cameras. When noted, they take a photo of the kite flyer and put it in a database for further assessment. This is funded by the "Black Opps" budget and is rumoured to cost 7.8 billion per annum. A small price to pay to keep the land safe from these evil kite flyers I say!

I just don't see how they are going to enforce this at the hobby level. What are they going to do, have federal agents go to all fields to look for a guy with a pair of video goggles on and a transmitter in his hands?

I really want some hi-res goggles with an integrated Gyro headtracker to fit into my Futuba 7C. Does anybody know of vendors in North America who are currently or will soon be selling such a product? (the only one I know of is RC-Tech in Europe)
Thanks.

I have the KX-131 camera with 320 horizontal lines of resolution. The video goggles I have are I-Theatre and 230,000 pixels resolution.
Question: given the limitations of the camera that I own, is there anything to be gained by moving up to high resolution goggles?
Thanks.

Hey Jetpilot,
I totally agree with you about the risk to full scale aircraft being miniscule. I would be more worried about hitting a pedestrian with the falling plane. I too would much rather be on a commercial jet plane than driving down the street with a drunk coming in the opposite direction and an 89 year old who can't see driving behind me, lol. Being in a moving car is probably the most dangerous activity, short of skydiving and motorcyling, I can think of.
I think the anxiety that VRFlyer is expressing, and I can understand his point of view, is that if it becomes common knowledge that there are many people flying at those altitudes, the government will try to legislate the use of RC planes. Such legislation would be totally useless unless they attacked the source and started to require RC vendors to show proof of a pilot's license in order to gain access to RC equipment, which would again be so hard to enforce it would not even be funny. Even then, a license can't prevent people from flying in the fashion that they desire. So, what then? On the ground enforcement officers with binoculars patroling the skys looking for errant planes? Never ever gonna happen.
Part of the great joy of FPV is that the government will never be able to put the kybosh on it.

When I found that G. Azzalin had the record for altitude gain on an electric plane of 3.4km, I began daydreaming about breaking it with a simple set-up such as a Parkzone Stryker with about 250 watts with light video downlink and enough juice to take me over 12000 feet. I tested the plane with the load and it climbed a rate of 35 feet per second straight up. I determined that it was relatively easy from a power perspective to get up there and wrote him with my idea of going to atlitude as quickly as possible.
He wrote me back stating that getting to altitude super fast was a great idea but it would be impossible to recover the plane without telemetry and an autopilot because of the super high winds at atlitude. Of course, this would add a lot of weight and degrade the climb rate I was getting. I still think it is possible to do it on a very calm day with unlimited ceiling using landmarks and studying google earth. I would think at the very least one would want a GPS chip to be able to recover the plane if it can't land right on target but then that adds weight and . . . well . . . I would be willing to risk a plane or two trying, however.

The 24300ft you are talking about is liquid fuel right?
I can't see how a plane could carry enough battery to make it that high and then fight the winds back down carrying the same weight. It would have to be crazy heavy if it was battery powered.
Maynard Hill, as far as I know, has the official record for altitude gain on an RC plane with Navy 40x binoculars. Then, more recently, he actually few an RC plane across the Atlantic from NewFoundland to Ireland in 38 hours, with telemetry and autopilot. Here is the article I read it from:
http://www.modelaircraft.org/mag/mhill/hillindex.htm
But you never know what kind of unofficial records are out there. Its all interesting stuff to think about.

noskylimit.com has much info on the records they set. They have some high alt. vids as well with the gas planes.
The 26000 ft record was set with binoculars way back in the early 1970s but I think it has now been broken with FPV.
Beware that these guys from Florida attracted some "attention" from the FAA for going high and potentially inferfering with full scale planes. Personally, I don't see the difference between a hawk flying at 4000 ft and an RC plane but goverment can't exactly legislate against hawks . . . For now there are no government regs or laws that I know off that prohibit high RC flights but I can just imagine governments starting to crack down on us in the future if there are complaints.

Another excellent video. I broke my video goggles this week-end and will wait till spring to get new ones with built in Gyro control.
I regularly fly at over 1200 ft as recorded by a Zlog. My EZ is still visible with the naked eye at that height as I get my spotter to point the 14dbi patch at it but I find that altitudes above that make me the lose sensation of movement. It feels like the plane is just hanging in the air as there is very little ground movement.
I once hit 1686 with a 37 inch span Stryker and naked eye.
I am pretty sure that standard 72mhz radios are good to over 25000 ft striaght up. But at that height losing the plane is a virtual certainty, unless it has onboard telemetry and is fuel powered. The record for an electric model is 3.4 km straight up.

Another great video. Great scenery.
What are you recording with? I have been flying for a while with the goggles but have not bought something to record with yet. Are you using a video splitter or separate receiver to record?

I enjoyed that video.
Tell me, on the Formosa, you fly rudder, ailerons and elevator? How do you pan the camera back and forth? Do you have a switch to toggle between rudder and panning the cam?
Spain looks like a great place to fly year round, not too cold in the winter . . .

That Hyperion is a nice looking plane. Tell me, are you going to have ailerons, rudder, and elevator or just ailerons and elevator for controls?
I flew my Easystar x-mas day as there was no wind. It was very stable and I glided around for 10 mins without any power after climbing very high. But I can see myself getting bored soon with such a stable and slow plane and needing to go for something faster like you are going for. I have a Stryker that would be good to try - it will go 65 mph on 3 cells.